Advice needed please

  • Thread starter Thread starter MuffinMan
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MuffinMan

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Hi there, used to be a regular member of the board before its revamp a year or more back.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I picked up the MSI K8T Neo F1 Athlon 64 3200 bundle (which includes the Athlon64 and fan). Problem is, I can't get the damn thing to load.

System Specs:

MSI K8T Neo
Athlon 64
Corsair Platinum TwinX 1024MB DDR (XMS3200 LL CAS2)
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB)
Western Digital HD (WD2000JB) installed on IDE1
LiteON 52x32x52 CDRW installed on IDE2

On top of that, I have a generic DVD drive, generic fdd, a second WD HD (60gigs) and a seagate HD (40 gigs)

As far as I can tell, the problem seems to be in the file handling of the motherboard. But I suppose it really could be anything. I've disabled VT8237 SATA IDE controller in the BIOS, as well as the P20378 S.ATA controller. As I don't have a Serial ATA drive, it seemed the correct thing to do.

Also, I disabled the audio in the BIOS as I intend to install an Audigy when (if) I get this thing up and running.

Initially, I mamaged to get WinXP (with SP1, self-created CD) to install ok. Installed the Via 4in1 drivers, Cat3.6's, then turned off the comp to stick in a 2nd HD. Once done, I tried copying some small files over onto HD1 but noticed there was some corruption when I tried to open and run them (one was DX9b, another was 3DMark2003)

When I tried to install them from a CD, they seemed to install fine.

Then I attempted to copy over large amounts of data (over 5gb) and at random intervals the machine just crashed and rebooted. Tried a few other things in WinXp, but decided to re-format and reinstall.

Now I keep getting errors (file missing, etc) on install. This happens at no specific point. In effect, I can't install Windows at all and I can't figure out why. I've tried installing from the original disk (without XP1) and still no joy. I've limited the HD to 137GB, I've formatted it with NFTS, Fat32, left it as a single partition, created 4 partitions, pretty much everything I can think of. I don't think it's the HD as I have installed it onto my other machine and installed XP with no problems (in fact, that's what I am working from now with a freshly formatted HD).

I'm just really confused.

As I've had no previous experience with motherboards that have onboard SATA, I guess that my problem may lie there. But any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for anyone who may be able to aid me :) Apologies for the length of this post.
 
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The problem can be root caused to IDE data corruption. If you could do more test, can you check if this problem only occur on IDE1 or IDE2 or both?

Does the problem follow particular HDDs? or all HDDs? Or the problem follow one particular IDE cable? Have you tried other IDE cable?
 
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I've tried 3 different IDE cables and it's all the same. I'm somewhat nervous about trying another HDD as I only have 2 others, both with a lot of data I'd really hate to lose.

I hadn't considered trying to put the HD on IDE2, but I think I'll give that a go :)
 
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If IDE2 still failed, I don't feel OK for this. I suggest you RMA the board or bring to your reseller and get his technician to check, with his HDD of course. :-D)

I had a feeling it's all about VIA IDE controller again......
 
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The problem with giving the mainboard retailer the HDD is that I bought it from another retailer.

However, I did a bit of searching and I'm starting to think about the possibility of the situation being PSU related. I've got a Q-TEC 400W, which I bought because the other 3 I was looking at were out of stock. It's probably the cheapest, crappiest thing in the system (with the Case being a Thermaltake XaserIII). I just don't know if a PSU could case the problems that I'm experiencing. However, I noticed a post by Bas stating they're crap.

As for the VIA IDE controller thing, what's that about? I admit, I've pretty much kept away from VIA since some problems 3 or so years back, but have a Pro2 based MB from MSI which seems ok, if none too spectacular. Other than that, pretty much all of my boards from MSI over the last few years have been either Intel based or Nforce (both 1 and 2) which have generally been great.
 
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Hi
i dont think its your psu...
i got the same problems with my setup and i?m using a enermax 460w psu(one of the best psu around)

i think you either got a bad mobo(as i have), do think it has to do with the ide controller, or there is a issue with westerndigital hdds using them on this mobo(hope this is?nt the problem, cus i got 2 of them, 120gb and 80gb).

i rma the board. hope i get a new one that solves this problem!!!
 
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Ok, so I got the new power supply and stuck it in, then did a fresh install. I was somewhat nervous when one of the files (I can't recall which) couldn't install during setup, but all seems ok.

It has, I must say, been quite a tricky setup overall and I'm a long way from getting it to the 'optimum' stage (memory settings in BIOS, etc) but it now seems stable and pretty fast :)

One (more!) question though. I can't install the audigy. Hell, I can't even get the system to boot when the card is put in. Once I managed to boot it (in the old days before my new PSU), but couldn't find the driver CD at the time and the system was unstable anyway so I wasn't worried. Now however, whichever PCI slot I put it in I can't get a boot (4 red lights). This upsets me a little as, though the Audigy isn't a great card, AC97 audio is crap.

Any advice on this one? Have I buggered something in BIOS?

[Edit: Additionally, I have an old set of Soundworks 4.1 speakers. They're perfectly fine for the room I have but sadly the subwoofer isn't enabled with the AC97 hardware as there isn't a setting for 4.1. I don't have a 5.1 system, therefore I don't have the additional cable that needs to be plugged in. This means that a crappy soundcard sounds even worse. Help!!!! :)]
 
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